You don’t have to be a big business or a major cyber force to be concerned with SEO. The truth is Search Engine Optimization matters for any website that wants to be found. Search engines are the primary way most internet users locate content. That means if the search engines aren’t finding your site they aren’t delivering you, neatly packaged, to searchers that are looking for you. That doesn’t mean everyone needs to enlist the help of a high priced specialist, if you can afford it, great.
But if not, there are plenty of simple tactics you can implement on your own that will help. Sure you may not be able to break into the top 3 for “cheap plane tickets” any time soon. But with a little smart strategizing, you can make yourself a lot more visible.
Choosing Keywords
Keyword targeting is one of the very first steps any website needs to take when it comes to SEO. Without doing the research and strategizing to figure out what you need to rank for to bring in qualified traffic, any tactics are like firing shots into the dark. One of the most important distinctions a business needs to make is the difference between how you refer to your business and how searchers will be searching for your products or services.
There are plenty of free tools online to help with keyword research, but among the most popular is the Google Keywords tool.
Taking the numbers too literally can be a mistake, but if you use them as a general gauge of popularity there are benefits to be gleaned. It’s important to note that any keywords with high search volume are going to be more competitive, while terms with low search volume may be more easily attained, but they also may not bring in a lot of traffic. The best keywords are those that fall somewhere in the middle, unless you’re ready to roll up your sleeves and join the long, brutal battle of trying to rank for highly competitive terms
On-Page Optimization
Once you’ve settled on a set of terms, optimizing on-site for them is the next vital step. On-page title tags are the most important place to put your keywords. Now, that doesn’t mean to stuff your tags with a plethora of terms, it means to carefully set up each page title tag with accurately descriptive terms of the content that is on that page.
So a page about Dog Breeding, would stick exclusively to dog breeding terms, leaving extraneous topics like “dog supplies, and “dog temperament” keywords for other more appropriate pages. On-page optimization also includes properly labeling images and links. When you use accurately descriptive anchor text for links and alt-text on images you help search engines attribute relevance. It’s also important for usability purposes that visitors can easily find what they are looking for and appropriately titled links will help with that immensely.
Link Building Theory
It doesn’t matter how well you optimize your site, at some point you need to get out of your own domain and into the rest of cyber world. No amount properly structured title tags or internal links will help you rank the way that back links will. That’s why everybody needs to conquer their fears of link building. We could go on for hours about different aspects of link valuation, link building strategy and techniques but it all comes down to this: everyone can and should actively build links. Link building relates in a major way to SEO but it’s not just about rankings, it’s about relationships, branding and traffic as well. Link building alone can be a full time job for anyone, so when you are a one-man-show it can be difficult to find the time.
Actually Getting Links
Link building strategy will depend largely on your individual niche. But it’s wise to get to know influencers in your market. Building relationships with bloggers, journalists and webmasters is one of the best ways to begin. Relationships can lead to guest posting ops, blog roll links, promotional and social media support, and even the potential to be included in weekly If you are going to make time for any kinds of link building, sure you can sign up for free directories, and leave blog comments. But ideally you are looking for followed links, integrated into content from authoritative, trusted sites. And by far, the best way to achieve links of that caliber is to connect with people in a real way. When you build links by building relationships the benefits are legitimate and long term.
When you combine proper keyword targeting and link building, you can start to see impressive results. Whenever possible it’s best to get links using anchor text that matches your primary keywords, as that will bring the greatest SEO benefit. Obviously there is much more to search engine optimization than simply these 2 areas.
But even without an in-depth understanding of all of the nuances of SEO anyone can utilize these strategies to help increase their search engine rankings and attract more traffic. Once you get the visitors on your site there is a whole other world of usability and conversion to explore. But for now with the right keyword targeting and link building you can dive headfirst into the deep sea of SEO.
This is a guest post by Jessica, who is a writer for Seosoftware.net a website offering comprehensive reviews of SEO software programs. If you want to guest post on this blog, check out the guidelines
20 comments
One should start the SEO work based on the above points, these are the basics of any SEO foundation.
Yeah, these tips would be more important for the SEO’s. These plans make yourself a lot more visible.
Yes, that tendency to over-complicate SEO is what scares people off I think. I suppose it also provides job security for some. Cheers.
Very good post Jessica. When I’m working with small business owners in the UK I always try to simplify things as you’ve done in this article.
It’s amazing how many people out there are scared of SEO and consider it to be some kind of mysterious and complicated process.
Hi Jessica,
SEO is a very complex stuff. You can choose a wrong keyword, link building strategy sometimes doesn’t work well and so on… Back in 2000 yes, SEO is easy to do but now each keyword has a millions competition, tricky search engine updates…. Nowadays SEO/SEM is a science.
It depends on the industry you are serving for. According my knowledge entire SEO strategy primarily depends on the list of keyword you are targeting for and types of link building you are using.
I find it quite a paradox! I am talking about link building. Googles says it’s not good to build links, because the links should be giving freely by people who find you content and want to share it with others. But, if you don’t build links, people won’t be able to find your content because they won’t find you in any search engine results.
Also, people don’t necesarily need to know seo nowadays because they can use social media for the same amount of traffic with less.
Using the right keywords is at the heart of SEO campaign. And incorporating them on your anchor texts are simply just too good to be neglected.
yes on-page optimization is one of the most important part of seo.. equal to backlinking.. many of the people just don’t focus on on-page seo and that is why there other efforts also do not turn into as good results as they should be
Hey Jessica, what are your thoughts about the latest Google algorithm changes? Does it change any of the advice you’ve provided?
Great list – the only thing I think I would add is assessing the activity of your competitors.
Although not particularly up to date, Yahoo site explorer is a free tool that lets you see what you areup against in terms of competition backlinks and opensiteexplorer.org from SEOMoz is another good tool.
Obviously, it’s not all about copying competitor links…. while you might want to match some of their best links, this is an activity ultimately most useful to find holes in their strategy that you can use to identify ways in which you can make your own campaign better than theirs 🙂
Hi Jessica thank you very much for your post!! It’s really interesting SEO post. I always learn a new thing about SEO.
Hi Jessica! Thanks for your post. SEO is definitely complex but it seems simple at the same time. My only real issues are all of the conflicting information out there on the internet. I agree with you though, keywords and link building are good and I don’t think they will be going out “style” anytime soon. For my word press site I use all in one seo to help with the title tags and such. Is that a good plug-in to use to get started?
Thanks for this article. SEO is probably the most popular term in the world of blogging.
My question and confusion is: When does SEO becomes bad and exerts negative influence on your website?
For overzealous bloggers and SEO conscious individuals, to what extent can they optimize the site with keywords, backlinks, contents; and it becomes SED: -Search engine deoptimization.
perhaps if you could write on it, I’d appreciate it.
many thanks
Keyword selection is one of important factor of seo. Build the theme related links with proper keyword combination that helps to your site.
I’m a newbie in the search engine optimization and I do my online research to fully understand the basic definition or principle of this task. So far, of the many posts I’ve read, this one gives me the best interpretation about SEO and I guess other first-timers too would appreciate this post. Website design can become complicated if from the beginning the learner hasn’t properly learned the fundamentals.
Thanks a lot for your link building strategies. One tip I would offer your readers is try to build links via as many domains as possible, it will hep your domain trust.
All the best, Jane
I read your posts for long time and I like also the commnets of your other follower. I have started with online marketing recently and I found it very useful. Building strategies are great help for me.
Alice
Generally, the more incoming backlinks a website has, the higher it will rank. However, it’s not all about the quantity of the incoming links, it’s also very much about the quality of the incoming links. Dozens of weak backlinks often don’t add up to the value of one or two strong valuable links. Google and other search engines consider a website with a lot of strong incoming links to be important, and consequently it will rank higher.
Absolutely, the quality of incoming links is more important than the quantity. The quality of links can either add value or keep the users away from the blog. After Google introduced more stricter rules, good quality link building practices has improved to a very large extent.